Arch Linux

Zergkolibri

Member

Registered: 2014-06-03

Posts: 7

[SOLVED] Minor Font Rendering Problems in urxvt

Hello Arch Community!

I'm having a minor issue rendering fonts in urxvt. I've been using xterm with the standard font (6x13) before. Since for my work I depend on international scripts, I'd set the following in my .Xresources:

XTerm*locale: true
XTerm*utf8Title:true

or used UXTerm, when possible.

Now I wanted to switch to urxvt, mainly for the reason of trimming my system. I got it to use the same font xterm does by setting the following in .Xresources.

URxvt*font: -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1

Urxvt is now displaying all characters as it should, however some characters are antialiased and the boxes don't render nicely.
I've attached a comparison of xterm (left side) and uxrvt (right side) displaying the same file (UTF-8-Demo.txt, attached below). If you pay attention to the japanese characters and the boxes near the bottom, you'll see what I mean.

Screenshot
UTF-8-Demo.txt

Does anybody know what might be causing the problem?
Thanks for your help! :)

Regards,
zk

Last edited by Zergkolibri (2014-06-11 14:38:12)

Zergkolibri

Member

Registered: 2014-06-03

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Minor Font Rendering Problems in urxvt

A small update, as I found a solution to the box rendering problem:
The problem was urxvt using it's own glyphs for rendering boxes. So what I had to do was set "skipBuiltinGlyphs" to true in my .Xresources:

URxvt*skipBuiltinGlyphs: true

(an alternative to that is launching urxvt with the -sbg flag.)
Now the boxes render the same way as in xterm. Only problem are still the antialiased Japanese characters (although the specified font provides those, I have the feeling urxvt is substituting them for a different one).

Regards,
zk

thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

Re: [SOLVED] Minor Font Rendering Problems in urxvt

I found the same display oddity here.  I really cannot tell if it's the fixed font rendered with antialiasing or another font entirely.  I've explored the issue a bit, got tired of exploration without finding a solution, and reverted to my standard DejaVu Sans Mono font ladder:

urxvt*font: xft:DejaVu Sans Mono:style=Book:antialias=false:size=8, \
            xft:WenQuanYi Bitmap Song:size=8, \
            xft:FreeSerif:style=Regular, \
            xft:unifont:style=Medium:antialias=false

Edited for typos.

Last edited by thisoldman (2014-06-07 23:26:13)

smudge

Member

Registered: 2011-03-20

Posts: 158

Re: [SOLVED] Minor Font Rendering Problems in urxvt

Recompile (see "abs" in the wiki) rxvt-unicode changing --enable-xft to --disable-xft.

Also, if you press and hold Ctrl, Shift and mouse button 1 in the urxvt window it will show what fonts are being used as you move the mouse around.

Zergkolibri

Member

Registered: 2014-06-03

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Minor Font Rendering Problems in urxvt

That solved it, thank you! Rxvt is now no longer substituting the specified font on Japanese Characters for a xft.
(Edit: Solution is recompiling rxvt-unicode with "--disable-xft" flag.)

Regards,
zk

Last edited by Zergkolibri (2014-06-11 19:53:06)